And the Wheel Keeps Turning (Guild recruiters, please scroll to the bottom)

I joined Team Sport as a temporary fill-in between progression raiding guilds. They were aware of this and accepted it. But as I was starting to consider moving on, I decided I kinda liked these people. After I wrote “The 5 Traits I Want in a Leader“, I realized I described Team Sport’s leadership. And when several of my guildies decided they wanted to raid more progressively, I was excited about the project and jumped on board.

So now, nearly a year after I joined, I think we’ve made good progress as a raid team. Raids start on time, or very close to on time. Our pace is much faster (though not completely to my liking). Raid discussions occasionally interrupt the tumbleweed on the forums. And we have a few players who’ve discovered a love of raiding within themselves.

But a bit over a week ago, I realized that we’d gotten as good as we’re going to get. We have a team of good players, as in players who show up and do a good job. Their characters are gemmed and enchanted and we rarely have deaths due to standing in the fire. But for most of them, raiding isn’t a passion.

When I raid, I turn off my phone (unless I’m waiting for an important call, in which case I warn the team ahead of time). I tell friends/guys I’m dating/etc that I’m not available during raid hours. I want 100% of my focus to be on what I’m doing. Then after raids, I review logs and I want to talk about the night.

On Tuesday night, as we were waiting on some afkers in between wipes on Ozz’nozz, I wiped away my tears of frustration and gave my raid leader my two weeks notice.

It’s not about “good” style or “bad” style, it’s about “different” styles

Me, I say I don’t have a spouse and I don’t have kids. I totally understand those who have to put their spouses and their kids before the raid. If I had a spouse and/or kids, I’d put them before my raid too. In fact, I would judge someone negatively if they were jerks to their families while playing a video game.

But I don’t have a spouse or kids. I‘m not ready to put other people in front of myself, thus I choose to be single and childless at this point in my life. It’s all about the social contract and I find myself wanting a social contract for other single and childless people.

It’s All About Soul

I love raiding. I had to put up a big fight at my job and negotiate to have raid nights off.

I look forward to my raids all day. I can’t wait to jump on the computer and get ready to go. I eagerly await my raid invite and let everybody know if I find it doesn’t come fast enough.

During raids, any interruption is a tragedy and, while necessary, breaks kind of annoy me. I pee before the raid, why doesn’t everyone else?

After a raid, I want to talk about it. I want to comb through the logs and find all the nitty gritties that’ll help me perform better next time.

If you suspect that I become impatient with those who don’t share my enthusiasm, you would be correct.

Now, that passion does waver. It’s usually dependent on what’s going on in my real life. When my real life was overloaded, I was so grateful to have a team who understood irregular schedules. I loved having a team that wouldn’t notice if I didn’t have time to study the boss fights before the raid. It was a relief to have frequent breaks to take care of real life stuff mid raid.

But, as soon as my real life stabilized, I found myself being deeply jealous of guild working hard modes. And of 25 man guilds. That’s when the cravings for something more took over.

I’ll miss the people

I’m so afraid that my guildies will read this post the wrong way. I really hope they don’t, because this is the first time I decide to move on from a guild with zero hard feelings towards anyone.

They were (are?) fantastic to be around. I couldn’t even say how often I’ve spit beer all over my keyboard from laughing too hard. The sports talk (and the subsequent discussions of the appropriateness of sports talk during raids), the serenades on vent, the guild cheers… I don’t think I’ll ever find a guild that comes close in term of atmosphere.

You can tell they really enjoy each others company, and care about each other as people. I remember one night, one of our players was having a really rough go. He asked to be sat, but the team refused. They wanted to be there for him and cheer him up, even if it meant wiping all night. It was terrible for progression, but so heartwarming that even I was moved.

Another memory… At Blizzcon I got cornered by The Feminists. (I describe myself as a feminist but I’m not well versed in the more scientific side of the movement and The Privilege still confuses me.) We got into a talk about guilds, they were telling me about how they had to reform their guilds to be more respectful toward women. I so proud to be able to tell them that my guild was already great when I joined and totally didn’t need any reforming. So proud.

All joking aside, I did really appreciate being treated as “one of the team”. Despite being the only girl in the guild at the time (over the course of the year, there have been a couple of wives/girlfriends and another girl who’ve logged in a few times and maybe did one raid with us; and Valithria who comments here sometimes logs in and says hi as well, but I’m the only regular, and the only raider), I’ve always been treated with respect. There’s even never been issues with hatespeach, and girlfriend-ranting has been kept to a minimum without any input from me.

It’s actually pretty cute that the rare times I say/do anything remotely girly or sexual, my teammates get all confused, as in “it…it can do that?”.

I had left my previous guild for a myriad of reasons, but the one that cut the deepest and still hurts today was gender discrimination-related. So being valued as a player and as a member of the raid team, without gender interfering, has become something that I don’t take for granted.

Toward the future (or If you are a guild recruiter…)

When I announced I was leaving, everyone was super nice and supportive. A few people even asked to come with me (this is how great the team is, it’s hard to keep us apart!).

Of those who wanted to come along, one, I think, has pretty much the same goals I do. So here, it is, Holy Pally and Mage/Warlock (he says he’ll play either character, but I think he secretly prefers to be a warlock) looking for guild!

Demographics: I have a strong preference for 25 man Alliance (I prefer 25s, and I don’t want to loose my achievement points…), my friend doesn’t have a preference as long as the raiding and the people are good.

Schedule: I’m West Coast and often work evenings so schedule is usually the limiting factor for me. I can raid after 9pm PACIFIC any night, and after 6 pm PACIFIC on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays. I believe my friend is available after 5pm pacific any day, and would prefer a team that doesn’t raid too late. 2 or 3 raids/week seems to be ideal to both of us.

Progression: As two people coming from a 5/8 normal Dragon Soul, 1/7H Firelands guild, we’re obviously not the most geared people in the game. But we’re both fast learners and dedicated players. We run the LFR, cap out our valor points and read our boss fights. We’re disciplined during raids, communicate well and drink up constructive criticism like it’s lifewater.

Environment: We’re coming from a very tight knit guild, so we’d both feel happiest in a guild where the teammates are also friends. Both of us being about 30, we’d like to play with people about our age and maturity level.

Ideally, we’d like to find a home together, but if our dream guilds end up being separate, that’s ok too. Bonus: a guild who takes both of us, may also get a kickass resto shammy bench-warmer.

We are 2/8H DS looking for a Holy pally. Pref 7/8 and at least 385 iLev. Our normal raid schedule is Tue-Thu 8:30PM-12Midnight Pacific, but that may be changing to 8-11. Currently, during progression, we added Monday night to but I believe that will stop in a couple weeks. Unfortunately we don’t have a raid spot for a warlock or mage right now, and we are 10m Horde guild. I know this doesn’t fit all your criteria, but I thought I’d at least give you a heads up about it :-)

I can definitely relate to the position that you’re in. I left my first guild searching for the very same thing. The people were awesome, but as raiders they weren’t progressing as fast as I would l personally would have liked. I’m currently in my third guild that I hopefully will be in for a long time. Ranking and server firsts aren’t the focus of the guild, but progressing in a steady fashion is. We were 6/8H in Firelands and currently 8/8 normal in Dragon Soul all on 25.

It’s a shame that your schedule doesn’t fit ours since we raid 6pm-9pm Pacific. We currently only have one warlock and holy pally.

I am struggling with this very thing right now. I love my guild, been with them for about 4 years now. I can’t leave them again, I tried once, killed me inside. The problem is we are all so close. We know each others kids names, wives, husbands, talk outside of game, know each other on Facebook (only reason I log in once every other month is to get a hold of them ^^). I left in Wrath to get Kingslayer, hated that I had to do that, but had no choice, the rest of the guild got Kingslayer about 6 weeks ago. I truly wish we were not so close, because I’m struggling to enjoy our raid nights, wiping repeatedly on the first boss of each raid tier… something that lasts for weeks =[

That’s a rough spot to be in. I got out easy because I wasn’t around too long, and during the first few months I was careful not to get attached since I figured I’d only be staying with them temporarily. A few of our long term members are going through that heartwretching phase though, with a few of us going to SWTOR, one going off to Diablo and a couple being pwned by real life. There have been a lot of sad, touching in-guild moments lately!

I hope I keep in touch with my guildies, that we play other games together and that we meetup once in awhile IRL. I totally want their kids to call me Auntie ^_^.

My hope now is that I can have both. I’m hoping that the “big” guilds on my realm, the “raiding” guilds have pushed folks away with their bullish behavior and elitism enough that I can swoop in, recruit a solid team, have them in the guild, but operate my own 10 man. I prefer 25’s, but I can’t see that happening. At least, perhaps, I can have a 10 man team that is no-nonsense, dedicated raiders, not necessarily pushing the envelope of progression and gunning for world-firsts, but ones that show up, pay attention, know their role, and don’t take 15 minute smoke breaks every time we wipe (which is generally 2 to 6 times every boss encounter until that tier is no longer relevant). That is what I’m hoping beyond hope for now.

That is adorable btw, the Auntie bit ^^ A huge portion of my guild are married with children (including myself) so a lot of our raid times/rules apply to that, which is awesome, including a no foul-language use in vent or guild chat (we also have guildies older kids, 8-12, playing with us as well). The guild is awesome, just not the raid team I want desperately.

You might face less interruptions and breaks if you were to do what everyone’s doing and try 10s, they seem to be more focused and more effective with time management. Speaking from my own guild’s experience, with our shortened holiday schedule of only 6 hours this week we still managed to clear our 5/8H farm plus full firelands, with a total of 28 wipes over the course of that. With the unwieldy size 25mans generally just can’t move that fast.

I do see what you mean by 10s being generally more efficient, but having run both sizes enough to form an opinion, I do prefer 25s. I love the closeness of 10s, but the chaos and epicness of 25s is just addictive.

To everyone that may even be thinking about talking to Ophelie about joining the team, you will absolutely NOT be disappointed. Just like Rilandune, I took a leave from my guild to go do Ulduar and ICC with Lodur and his crew. It was great, and I got my Kingslayer with them. But, I missed my friends. When they started “getting the bug”, I went back to go lead them. That’s how Ophelie joined us.

I can honestly say that she has been one of the driving forces in the guild and one of the main reasons I fought to keep the team going. She was a catalyst for a lot of the changes and adjustments that we made. I loved every conversation we got into about adjusting strategies, or building up our healer core. She’s more passionate and considerate than most raiders I’ve been with. If you think you’re just picking up “a Holy Pally”, you’re severely understating her value and worth to a raid team. She knows what she’s talking about, she does her homework, she puts that extra mile in. If it wasn’t for my decision to give SWTOR a solid go, I’d be applying right along with her.

And if I find out that she’s being mistreated at all, as her soon-to-be former raid leader, I have every right to be pissed! She’s gonna be “Auntie Ophelie” someday, ya know!

I felt the same way, missed my friends terribly. The guild I moved to had me geared up in no time, burning through ICC, they were structured, disciplined, started/ended on time… but I still missed my friends. The raiding felt empty because of it. I’d imagine you felt the same way Thespius.

And to echo your point, Ophelie is not “a Holy Pally” she is “THE Holy Pally.” This chick lives, eats, sleeps, and breaths Holy-Paladin-in-ing. I’ve never played with her in game, but just from reading her posts I can attest to her being a tremendous asset to any team. She’s the reason I switched from tanking to healing on my Paladin.

Aww thanks! It’s kinda scary since I’ve never really had to guild shop before.,. And sometimes frustrating because my work schedule is so crappy. I should move back to the East Coast – the raiding is better there.

I’m a bit like you in some ways. I love reading up about new fights, watching videos, and combing through forums for advice/tips on how to handle the various things going on. I then post all I’ve learnt with video links onto our forum, but as soon as the raid starts I realise most of the people haven’t even bothered to read what I’ve posted!
Tank dies to Impale on Madness – Huh? What happened? Why did I get one-shot?
DPS dies on Spine because of Plasma debuff – I didn’t get any heals despite I was low health for ages. What are the healer doing?

I remember on Maloriak our tank kept dying during green phase, and our RL was blaming the healers, so I felt great when I could prove from WoL that the adds were buffing the boss and he was two-shotting the tank. Yes, I find it very frustrating that people just aren’t interested in finding these things out for themselves. For me it’s half the fun!

As far as having a boyfriend and raiding, I have to keep telling him that it’s every bit a commitment as his football matches are to him. I can’t just drop everything during a raid to help him with something, any more than he could me when he is on the playing field, but it is hard to get him to acknowledge that.

Oh yeah! People not reading what I post on the forums drives me nuts too. I even had one guildie throw a tempter tantrum once when I (gently) suggested he skim over the boards once a week or so. Like what the heck. (But I think he was kind of mentally unstable. He ragequit a few weeks later when he showed after raid had already started and we wouldn’t kick anyone to make room for him. I was very entertained.)

I’ve never had a boyfriend live with me, so it’s pretty easy for me to tell guys I’m dating early on that I’m busy from 6-9 on Tues/Thur. If a guy moved in, I think I’d probably need to have a talk with him to determine what we feel comfortable with. Whether or not I get hassle-free game time would have to be something we decided on together. I hope that if a guy does move in at some point, that he’ll be a gamer too and have the same attitude toward gaming as I do.

Neat post, though I’m sure the question many of your readers must be asking themselves is, “How can one girl walk away from both Vik & Thespius in the sae year? OMG their dulcet voices would have me totally hooked!”

It was a year between the two, though, give or take a few days. Thes left us first. I was the first one to give my resignation, but he quit raiding with us before I did. He hangs out with his SWTOR guild now. I just want to make it clear that I AM NOT JEALOUS at all. ;D

And I so miss you and Conquest. I wish I could go back but 1)I can’t raid Mondays and 2)Your GM still owes me a (pretty big, by now) apology.